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Comment by ACuriousMan on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease · 2012-09-29T12:55:03.703Z · LW · GW

No. That is not how things work. All you are doing is confusing several different questions into one. The response to peoples' misunderstanding of what disease means isn't to embrace their understanding as a new definition of disease and take each component of that new definition bit by bit. It is to clarify what disease is (and disease means something). Then once you estabish the medical definition of disease, you can ask: does obesity qualify as a disease. Then you can ask ose other questions in light of our answer (do sufferers from obesity deserve our sympathy, is obesity a good or bad thing, should it be treated, etc). That doctors label it a disease doesn't give us an ought, it gives us an is. Just because doctors determine something is a disease that doesn't mean it has to be treated. We need to establish what the individual wants and give him the best info to make that choice himself (how long does he want to live, what kind of lifestyle and diet is acceptable to him, how important is it to him to be perceived as fit, etc). We can also establish general shoulds for the population if we assume most people want to live long and healthy livestherefore doctors encourage patients to avoid being obese (with the understanding that individual goals and desires vary). Then there is the quesiton of whether obesity is a matter of self control or not. Siply being a disease wouldn't provide an answer to this. Soe diseases are outside the patient's control, others aren't. Again you are respondong to an inccorect understanding of what disease is, by offering up a bad new definition of disease and then confounding the definition with a bunch of questions that are largley seperate from the definiton itself. Tis more wrong, not less....

Comment by ACuriousMan on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease · 2012-09-28T13:39:21.726Z · LW · GW

It isn't "mere contradiction". It is a looking at what the writer is doing rhetorically and questioning the root of his argument. Again his characteristics of disease have nothing to do with our medical understanding of disease. Disease means something rather specific in the medical profession, and just throwing up a bunch of characteristics based on nothing more than he writers intuition (and with no supporting evidence) is a horrible foundation for an argument.

Comment by ACuriousMan on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease · 2012-09-26T23:58:34.004Z · LW · GW

And?

Comment by ACuriousMan on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease · 2012-09-26T13:24:32.463Z · LW · GW

Most of, if not all of them have nothing to do with what disease is. He is creating a definition wholecloth through his characteristics.

disease /dis·ease/ (dĭ-zēz´) any deviation from or interruption of the normal structure or function of any body part, organ, or system that is manifested by a characteristic set of symptoms and signs and whose etiology, pathology, and prognosis may be known or unknown.

Comment by ACuriousMan on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease · 2012-09-25T22:52:08.828Z · LW · GW

The disease characteristics is where this essay breaks down. Those don't really line up with any medical definition of disease. Seems like he redefines disease in order to deconstruct it a bit.